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Video: 1 channel, 2’44’14
Pusto project is based on the illusion of "Phantom Words" discovered by the psychologist Diana Deutsch. Her work was based on the perception of music and speech, recognizing images in the form of multiple auditory illusions. On the one hand - the russian word "пусто" (empty), which is repeated several times, loses its meaning and turns into a set of meaningless sounds. On the other hand - listening to a voice fragment leads to phantom words related to our knowledge, beliefs and expectations. Repetition is also directly relevant to the notion of ritual, in which it helps us to focus on what is happening. Referring to speech as a material gesture, in which the phonographic structure of the word and its sound becomes a kind of sound architecture, fills the space. Illusions are unstable images, generating the appearance of multiplicity, corroding boundaries, autonomous but freely interpretable, in search of information. The experience of living perception is achieved through listening, attention shifts from the external attributes of space to internal sensations. The video sequence allows one to immerse oneself in a state close to a meditative state.
Video
Photobook
1999Q (Russia, Murmansk) — interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker
The project is going to take place at the unique time when the daylight is endlessly extended and the sun is on the horizon for 24 hours. Field recording lab is the final stage of the international research project Murmansk Prospekt where artists from Russia and the Netherlands are exploring the Northern soviet heritage and the features of the Arctic urban territories.
Video
Anna Khan
Aleksandr Verevkin
Andrey Nosov
Danil Raskov
The expedition explored the geographical, historical, and cultural dimensions of the metallurgical industry in Russia during the early 18th century. It proposed a shift in the historical narrative, moving attention away from the Sestroretsk arms factory toward the northern Olonets factories.
Within this perspective, the development of the region is presented as part of a broader process shaping the early metallurgical industry. This approach allows connections to emerge between different Karelian territories whose histories are closely intertwined with factory production.
Archival materials and historical records reveal that workers, together with their families and construction resources, were relocated from the Olonets factories to establish a new factory at the mouth of the Sestra River. These movements laid the foundation for new industrial and cultural landscapes.
Combining a scientific approach with lived experience, the expedition engaged directly with historical material, offering a layered reading of the past that connects places, people, and industrial processes, and making these insights accessible to a wider audience.
Acting as the zero point of a coordinate system, the body’s position in space and time shapes what enters the field of perception. Under conditions of isolation, the body is compelled to adapt: it inhabits confined spaces, recalibrates its sense of presence, and develops new forms of sensitivity.
Invisibility
Regina Dmitrieva
Marina Blinova
Sound
Fridaymilk
Hilde Sørstrøm (Norway, Tromsø) — art critic, founder of on-line magazine hakapik.no
Aleksandr Timofeev (Russia, Pskov-Moscow) — digital artist, Fluc28
Dmitry Ulmer-Morozov (Russia, Moscow) — digital artist, Fluc28
Samuel Brzeski (text, voice)
Marion Bouvier (text, voice)
Katja Butorina (3D model, sound)
Zhanna Guzenko (voice)
Ritha Johansen (illustration)
Oleg Khadartsev (sound)
Hilde Sørstrøm (text)
During the final days of the Lofoten International Arts Festival 2019 a group of writers, sound artists, graphic designers and media artists based in Russia and Norway gathered together in Svolvaer, Lofoten. With the aim to collectively tell speculative stories about the place, they immersed themselves into topics such as tourism and human-nature relations. They argued, brainstormed, laughed and they shared understandings and misunderstandings. The group then let their personal experience of the place, and the art presented at LIAF 2019, be a starting point for them to reflect upon and question their own perception of the place and topics discussed.
Speculative documentation laboratory was transformed into a digital zine, consisting of speculative stories in the form of texts, field recordings, illustration and animation.
View digital zine "Nice question"
Video
Jonathan Reus
Marcello Lussana
George Profenza
Nik Forrest
Alanna Thain
This prototype explores and reroutes one key condition of the pressure to perform in contemporary life–immersion. The “i[e]nterface” immersion is the means by which the viewer can sense thought happen. A 3D printed metamorphic mask combines human and non human features, drawn from the forests that skirt the city of Bratislava. The mask is the entry point to a sensitive sphere of immersive perception, as tactile sensors reading galvanic skin responses translate feelings into soft signals of light. From within and from without, the subjective, free play of feeling is made visible as a world.
Read full documentation
Video
Nicolay Novikov
Patricia Reed
Nicolay Spesivtsev
Anna Tokareva
Dzina Zhuk
Over three days, participants entered a collective fiction in which they had all experienced Burnout. Drawing on deconstructed LARP techniques and corporate stress-test scenarios, the project deliberately limited individual agency to create a common starting point for shared narration. From this state emerged the idea of “holed futurism” — a speculative model of the future shaped by limited resources, recovery, and attention to the material conditions of bodies, environments, and cultural systems.
Through the exchange of semi-fictional, situated knowledge, holes appeared as active elements of the environment, connecting human and non-human actors. Trauma was approached not as an event, but as a structural logic — one that reorganizes interfaces, interactions, and the conditions of presence itself.
The project focuses on four primary emotions — joy, anger, sadness, and pleasure — selected from Paul Ekman’s classification. Guided by Robert Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions, each emotion is expressed through a distinct color: yellow, red, blue, and purple. These colors form a shifting palette that reflects the emotional balance of the participant over time.
Emotional data is visualized both statistically and spatially. Alongside percentage-based indicators, Kinect tracking maps emotional activity onto different areas of the body, connecting internal neurological processes with physical presence.
By making emotional states visible and measurable, the project invites reflection on how emotions are perceived, interpreted, and externalized through technology.
The installation was presented as part of Science Fest, St. Petersburg, Russia.
Brain activity
joy
surprise
fear
anger
disgust
sadness